Ratchet the Autobot
by Flight of Insanity
Summary: Desperate times call for desperate measures, and when the Autobot CMO refuses to take a break, the officers pull out the big guns.


"This is a bad idea."

"They _did_ look a lil' too happy about this didn' they?"

Doorwings fluttered in irritation, "Why are we going through with this again?"

"Uh… Because we ran out of good ideas about a joor ago?"

A sigh. "Why did Prime have to make this an order?"

A chuckle, "'Cuz he's either too smart, or too chicken ta deal wit' the mech on his own."

* * *

><p>As far as Ratchet was concerned, working yourself to the point of exhaustion and then beyond was merely an occupational hazard. Patients frequently needed constant care, and there were some cases he would rather handle himself, so pulling a triple shift (or longer) was almost normal. He wasn't surprised in the slightest, then, when he blearily came out of recharge and found himself face down on the desk in his office. A quick glance at the monitors around him showed stable vitals on all his patients, so <em>that<em> wasn't what had woken him up. Still too tired to lift his head all the way, he was about to drift back into the land of the unconscious when he heard it.

"Raaaaatchet…"

The call was so faint, he almost missed it. The second, however, he couldn't possibly miss – seeing as the speaker was suddenly right behind him.

"You silly sleepy-head! Wake uuuuup!"

With a jerk, he was sitting straight up, grimacing slightly as overworked joints protested the rapid movement. Whirling around, he locked optics with the Primus-forsaken mechs standing in his office; he still had no idea how they kept managing to sneak in. Blue optics narrowed dangerously as Ratchet glared at the twins.

"Go away."

The red imp merely smirked, "Raaaaaatchet!"

The CMO scowled in irritation at the sing-song falsetto as the red twin continued, "Come with us Ratchet!"

"Yes, come with us, Ratchet!" Sunstreaker decided to pitch in, wearing an equally devious smirk.

Ratchet put on his best "Hatchet Glare" as Jazz liked to call it; the twins weren't fazed in the slightest. The CMO growled, "This had better be slaggin' important. Did Red Alert crash again?"

Sideswipe's grin stretched so wide Ratchet was pretty sure his faceplate was going to crack. "Noooooo! We found a map!"

Ratchet opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by the yellow twin. "A maaaap! To Spark Mountain!"

The medic just stared at the pair. He couldn't remember the last time someone had made him actually speachless, but by Primus, those two had done it. As he stared, he wondered just what he'd done in a past life to have been saddled with this level of idiocy on a daily basis. Whatever it was, he decided he was having none of it today. With a snort, the medic turned away, flapping a hand at them, "Yeah. Spark Mountain. You two have fun."

There was an almighty clatter of metal on metal and flying data pads as Sideswipe took a flying leap and landed on the top of the desk, causing Ratchet to flail backwards in his chair to avoid being hit by the red warrior, "Sideswipe, what the frag ar-"

"NOOOOO! You must come with us, Ratchet! Come with us to Spark Mountain!" Sideswipe grabbed at the medic, but missed, and Ratchet's chair tipped all the way over with a second loud crash of metal.

The medic's engine rumbled angrily from his new found spot on the floor, "If I go with you, will you shut up and get out of my office?"

Sunstreaker just laughed as though Ratchet had told the funniest joke of all time. Sideswipe snatched the medic's hands and hauled him up off the floor, out of the office, out of the medbay, and into the hall.

* * *

><p>It was sometime after the 27th hallway (or was it 34th?) that Ratchet could easily admit that he was lost. How he was lost while still inside the Ark he wasn't entirely sure, but he was willing to bet it had everything to do with the primary colored warriors currently trilling to each other in front of him.<p>

One would make a trilling noise of seemingly random pitch and duration, and then the other would answer. And every so often one of them would look back at the medic and giggle. The medic in question contemplated trying to run away, but since he didn't have the slightest idea where freedom was, he settled for attempting to burn holes in the back of the twins' helms.

He was so caught up in his hopes of spontaneous combustion, that he didn't notice Sideswipe come to a screeching halt and crashed into the back of the red warrior. Staggering back a step, Ratchet was about to berate the twin for not giving any warning when a red arm flung out and pointed down the hall.

Curiosity got the best of the medic and he leaned around the aggravatingly tall twin to look down the hall and, as his processor struggled to comprehend what he saw, he was wishing he hadn't looked at all. "What… what is that?"

"It's a minibot, Ratchet!" Sunstreaker answered in the oh-so-audio defiling sing song voice the pair seemed to be so fond of.

"A _magical_ minibot! It's going to show us the way to Spark Mountain!" Sideswipe added.

Ratchet stared at the… abomination taking up most of the hallway. It looked like it could have been a minibot. Or several. Who had all been glued together. The medic gave the twins a flat glare, deciding to leave the headache of their punishment to Prowl, and instead asked, "I thought you said you had a map."

Twin devilish grins lit up the pair of faceplates just as the "minibot" made a strangled warbling noise. Sunstreaker flung his arms up in victory before pointing down a side hallway, "It has told us the way!"

Ratchet slapped a hand over his optics and sighed heavily, squawking indignantly when his hands were snatched and he was dragged down the hall. As soon as he managed to get his hands back, the medic stomped to a halt in the middle of the hall and jabbed a finger angrily at the twins, "Now you listen here, you half-bits, I don't have time to be dragged off on some-"

Several tons of colorful metal flew through the air toward the medic as one hand clamped over Ratchet's mouth and another made a shushing gesture. "Quiet! Or you'll wake the quadrupeds!"

The CMO's gaze turned as flat as Prowl's. "The what?"

Sunstreaker's head canted to one side for a moment before his optics got impossibly wide and he grinned before shouting, "The quadrupeds! They awaken!"

On that random cue, the frontliners took off sprinting down the hallway, leaving a bewildered and most unhappy Ratchet standing in the hallway. The CMO looked up at the ceiling, "Why me? Why can't I have one breem of peace and quiet. Is that too much to ask?"

Apparently it was. Ratchet heard more than saw the tidal wave of metal currently galloping through the hall he had just been led down. For a few seconds, he thought he was about to be rescued, but that hope vanished as soon as his audios picked out the incoherent roaring of angry Dinobots and the whoosh of a flamethrower. Deciding that following the twins on their insane "quest" was a better option than being squashed under Dinobot feet, Ratchet took off at a dead sprint. He dashed down the corner and skidded around a corner, half expecting to find a dead end. Instead a pair of hands shot out of an open doorway and snagged ahold of the medic as he ran by, yanking him into the dimly lit room.

After making sure he didn't fall over from the abrupt change of direction, the medic leaned against a wall, vents heaving. Hearing giggling come from across the room, he glared in that general direction, "I hate you both. You better hope you don't end up in my medbay anytime soon."

A red arm snaked its way across the medic's shoulders, and Sideswipe said, "But Raaaatchet! We're almost there! We're almost to Spark Mountain!"

Ratchet pried the offending limb off him with two fingers and shot the red twin the nastiest glare he could muster; Sideswipe backed off a step, holding his hands up in peace, but still grinning like a maniac. Irked at being momentarily forgotten, Sunstreaker made a coughing sound before planting his hands on the medic's shoulders and pushing him toward the door in the back of the room. The medic, however, did not want to be pushed and dug in like a mule in a cornfield.

"Oh, no. I am not going anywhere else with you. _You_-" he jabbed a finger at the twins for emphasis, "-are going to take me back to my medbay right slagging now!"

Sideswipe pulled his best kicked puppy look and Sunstreaker rolled his optics at his twin's lack of shame. Ratchet saw the look and crossed his arms across his chest with a huff, "Oh, no. Don't even try that with me."

"But Raaaaaaaaaatchet! We're almost there!" He waved his hands at the door they were currently facing to emphasize just how close they were. When the medic didn't react as much as he'd hoped, the red twin donned his favorite cheeky grin and sidled up to the medic, "Plus, I hear there's an entire _river_ of high grade that runs down the mountain."

Ratchet sighed and the twins shared a knowing glance. _Almost there!_

Sunstreaker took a couple steps toward the door, hand hovering just over the control, "Plus, legend has it there's a secret tunnel that leads straight to the medbay!"

A few seconds of silence ticked by before it was broken by a sound like thunder as the Dinobots lumbered down the hall. Ratchet groaned, "I really, really hate you both."

"We know," the twins chimed in unison.

Sunstreaker keyed open the door and Sideswipe pushed the medic through the doorway, only to have the stocky mech stop short as his gaze traveled upward. For all outward appearances, he was standing in front of an actual mountain (albeit a small one) and, as the arrow-shaped sign indicated this was "Spark Mountain".

"…Well, I'll be slagged. It really does exist."

The giggling started again, and before Ratchet could turn around, he felt something hit him in the shoulder and felt his systems start shutting down into recharge. "Frag it all," he mumbled before crashing onto the floor.

* * *

><p>When Ratchet started to come back online, the first thing he noticed was that his systems felt fuzzy. But not a bad fuzzy, the good kind of fuzzy that comes from a surplus of recharge. The second thing he noticed was that if his chronometer was to be believed, he'd been out cold for over an orn.<p>

"Fraggers."

Hearing a snicker from the corner of his room, Ratchet found himself instantly wide awake. The voice continued, "Language, Ratchet! You'd think after having such a nice orn off, you'd be in a better mode when you woke up!"

Ratchet sat up, pinning the white mech lounging in a chair with an unamused glare. "Wheeljack. Why are you in my quarters?"

White shoulders rose in a shrug, "Prime ordered me to keep you away from the medbay until you're properly refueled."

Ratchet wasn't an idiot, and it didn't take him long to connect the dots. He barked a short laugh, "I'll bet that's not the only thing he's ordered in the last couple orns."

Wheeljack looked lost, fins flashing in confusion, "What?"

Ratchet shook his head as he wandered toward the door, "Just never, _ever_ agree to go to 'Spark Mountain' with the twins."

The engineer vaguely wondered if he should be worried about his friend, but decided he would probably be safest if he didn't question his medic's sanity. Noting the direction the medic gone, Wheeljack frowned and dashed out the door to try to herd the medic away from his domain.

* * *

><p>AN: Don't own. I'm just playing with 'em. :)


End file.
